Hillary Clinton’s “Admission” of Responsibility Is Her “Attempt” To Shield President Obama from the Benghazi Scandal — But, if she was actually trying to fall on her sword, she missed.

In the aftermath of the White House’ walking back the remarks of Vice President Biden about Benghazi during his debate with Paul Ryan, the only question left was whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would fall on her sword  —  or be helped to do so. Maybe, by taking an old play from the Janet Reno playbook --- taking some kind of verbal responsibility  --- she can avoid having to do anything else 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used an out-of-the-way interview in Peru to take some kind of official responsibility for the Benghazi disaster; and in so doing, to provide some kind of political cover for her boss, President Obama. These were some of the remarks of Secretary of State Clinton:

“I take responsibility” for the security oversights that allowed the Sept. 11th  attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya....”;

“What I want to avoid is some kind of political gotcha or blame game,” Clinton told CNN. “I know that we’re very close to an election … [and] we are at our best as Americans when we pull together....”; and

“The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals, [who are] the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision.”

According to The New York Times, “Clinton appeared to be trying to inoculate President Obama from criticism as he prepared for Tuesday’s [campaign] debate.”

However, any such inoculation is a very unlikely outcome. Quickly, three Republican Senators, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte,  rejected the gambit, saying jointly:  “If the President was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team  —  but if the President was aware of these earlier attacks in Benghazi prior to the events of September 11, 2012, then he bears full responsibility for any security failures that occurred...”

Other commentators have also noted that the Secretary of State also apparently used her interview to shift some of the blame onto lower-ranking State Department officials who were implementing the administration’s policy of downgrading security in Libya.  More important, none of what Hillary Clinton had to say addressed the part of the Benghazi scandal related to the weeks-long attempts by the White House and the Obama Campaign, including statements by Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary of State Clinton, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and President Barack Obama, himself, to cover the whole mess up as some kind of spontaneous response to an anti-Mohammad video clip.